Sacramento home appraisers

They say everything comes back in style, but I’m pretty sure cottage cheese ceiling texture isn’t one of those things. Well, I hope not. This style of texture is also known as popcorn, or more formally as acoustic or stucco ceiling. The house I grew up in had this texture, and a couple of rooms in the first house I bought did too. The other day on Twitter someone asked me how ceiling texture impacts value, and since we had a great conversation, I figured we could deepen the topic here. I’d love to hear your insight in the comments below.

3 things to consider about cottage cheese ceilings and value:

The General Truth: Cottage cheese ceilings are from yesteryear, so they tend to make a home feel more outdated. Ultimately when a home has tired elements, it tends to sell for less or need to spend more time on the market to sell to the right buyer. Okay, that makes sense. But how much does this type of texture impact value? Well, that really depends on the following.

The Whole Enchilada: I’ve found when a home has popcorn ceiling texture, it often has other outdated features. We might also see older wallpaper, an original kitchen and bathrooms, wood wall paneling, steel casement crank windows, etc… Thus the popcorn texture is only one symptom of an antiquated home. My sense is buyers tend to see the entire package of a home as outdated, so they become willing to pay a certain price for “the whole enchilada” so to speak. In other words, buyers don’t often segment one feature like popcorn texture to ask how much it might detract from value, but instead see the property as a whole and thus make one big value adjustment downward. Of course if a home is updated throughout besides popcorn ceiling texture, a buyer might realistically ask how much it is going to cost to remove the texture. The cost of the texture might be a reasonable value deduction, but not always as seen below.

Different Expectations in Neighborhoods: I told a home owner the other day NOT to remove his cottage cheese ceilings for a planned renovation. Yes, install straight-edge granite counters in the kitchen and paint the cabinets. Yes, spruce up the bathrooms. Yes, paint the interior. Yes, lay new carpet. But leave the cottage cheese because all the remodeled comps still have texture on the ceilings. Since buyers were paying the highest prices in the neighborhood despite popcorn ceiling texture, it didn’t make financial sense for the owner to fork out a few thousand dollars to scrape his ceilings (this was in the Sunriver neighborhood in Rancho Cordova). This is a good reminder that it’s easy to bring in our own judgements and perceptions when valuing a home, but ultimately we have to look closely at the market to glean insight. We might be prone to think a home would sell for less because of the dated texture, but in this case it was best to look at other competitive sales in the neighborhood and let those sales set the standard for what we think. At the same time, if all the sales in the neighborhood do not have texture, it’s probably time to start scraping because owners need to eliminate obstacles and excuses for buyers making offers. In a neighborhood where ceiling texture is not common, scraping is a good move because it is a fairly minimal cost, and in my experience owners are often likely to recoup scraping expenses in the resale market because of the increased marketability. But remember, if all the comps already have no popcorn texture, scraping texture simply brings the home up to par with others in the neighborhood.

I hope this interesting and helpful. By the way, if you want to pave the way forward to help bring back popcorn texture, here is a DIY tutorial for you. 🙂

Imagine a home owner adds a “Bonus Room” on the rear of a house. It’s nice to have the extra space, right? Well, imagine one of the rear bedrooms now no longer has a direct exit to outside of the home. Is that going to be an issue?

The Problem: This home above has an addition of a Bonus Room that essentially removes direct exterior egress from one of the bedrooms. No big deal, right? Well, it actually is a big deal because by definition a bedroom must have two methods of egress. If you didn’t know, according to International Residential Code (R310.1), a bedroom needs to have one doorway that opens to the interior of the house and one doorway or window (of adequate size) that opens directly to the outside of the house (read here for more on what makes a bedroom a bedroom). Thus when an addition of a Bonus Room, Family Room, or Whatever Room blocks the secondary egress in a bedroom….. Houston, we have a problem! All of the sudden a room that was previously considered a bedroom is technically no longer a bedroom. If you’re interested in reading the nitty-gritty of various national codes on the subject, check out this document (pdf).

Impact on Value: Being that I’ve seen this issue twice in the past month, I thought it was worth kicking around some thoughts. Like most things in real estate, we need to look at the problem from a few different angles:

The Lender: Keep in mind a lender might not want to lend on a property when there is a blatant safety issue. Or a lender might ask for the addition to be removed, a secondary egress to be added in the “bedroom” if possible, or for the appraiser to not consider the room as a bedroom any longer. Ultimately the appraiser can ask the lender for some direction or advice, but at the end of the day the appraiser has to communicate very clearly and make decisions that will lead to a credible value.

Not Code Enforcement: Let’s remember it’s not the appraiser’s job to enforce code violations or stop a deal from moving forward if there are code issues. Increasingly lenders want appraisers make comments as if they were home inspectors, engineers, or code enforcement officers, but the appraiser’s job is to come up with a credible value. Bottom line. At the same time, appraisers need to know enough about building code to be able to recognize a blatant egress issue, disclose the issue, and consider if there is any impact on the value (there may or may not be).

Less Bedrooms: Decreasing the bedroom count could impact value since a property is likely less marketable with less bedrooms.

Permits: Let’s realize this addition may not have been done with a permit in the first place, so the appraiser is going to have to figure out what the market is willing to pay for a house that has some non-permitted space. Some appraisers will not assign any value to a non-permitted area, saying “no permit = no value”, while others will try to figure out how much the market is willing to pay for the house in its non-permitted state. Read more on a lack of permits here. Remember that some additions increase the functionality of a floor plan in a positive way, whereas other additions make a floor plan very funky (in a bad way).

The Whole Enchilada: Ultimately, I find myself looking at the “whole enchilada” or entire package of a house when trying to figure out how a layout like this might be seen in the market. For instance, in a recent appraisal consulting assignment, an owner hired me to help him see the market since his house was not selling. On paper it looked like the house should be valued toward the top of the market because of its much larger size, but in actuality the lack of upgrades and funky floor plan (that blocked egress from one bedroom), ended up meaning the house attracted zero offers and was more comparable with the bottom of the market. The way I knew the house was more closely aligned with the bottom of the neighborhood spectrum was finding a few odd floor plan sales (that was lucky), the subject having zero offers at a higher price range, and even a previous sale of the subject property from years ago that showed it sold at the bottom of the market at the time despite its very large size.

I hope that was helpful. By the way, thank you to home inspector Ken Ives for a good conversation on some of the above points as I prepared this post.

Questions: Any thoughts, insight, or stories to share? Did I miss anything? I’d love to hear your take.

Can a property be appraised above the highest sale in the neighborhood? A real estate agent friend was told recently by an appraiser that the house could not be appraised above the highest sale because that is what Fannie Mae says. Is that true or not? Let’s consider some of the following points.

5 reasons why a house CAN be appraised above the highest sale:

The Horse’s Mouth: Fannie Mae does not say appraisers cannot appraise a property above the highest sale. I’m not sure if the appraised value in this case was on point or not, but the appraiser was simply not correct regarding the supposed rule by Fannie Mae. Whenever someone states, “Fannie Mae says….”, I recommend asking the person what page of the Seller’s Guide he/she is referring to. 🙂

Increasing Market: If a market is increasing in value, there is going to be a legitimate time where buyers are simply willing to pay more than most recent sales or even the highest sale. This is especially true when inventory is sparse and interest rates are low. This reminds us too that appraisers don’t make values increase, but rather measure when the market changes.

Lower Sales: Recent sales may have closed at lower levels, but there is no rule that says appraisers have to use the newest sales. In fact, even Fannie Mae states the appraiser may need to use older sales rather than newer ones. Sometimes lenders tell appraisers to use sales within the past 90 days, but that type of rule is not consistent with Fannie Mae, and it might stand in the way of a good appraisal too. For instance, if two distressed short sale models closed last month, but there are ample model match sales from prior months (and current model match listings at higher levels too), it’s probably best to ignore the two recent lowball sales since they don’t represent the market. Remember also that one or two sales do not make or break a market.

Zero Sales:The appraiser in this case said Fannie Mae prohibited the appraised value from being above the highest sale. But what if there were zero sales over the past year? Would that mean current value is bound to where sales were at last year? Nope. It can be tricky to see the market when there are no recent sales, but it can be done with time and skill.

The Best: The house being appraised might be the best on the block or have a feature that pushes it over the top of recent prices. Thus it can make reasonable sense to see a home appraise for more than the others. Of course just because someone thinks a home is the best thing ever does not mean the market is willing to pay the highest price ever. Also, keep in mind every neighborhood has a price ceiling, which means buyers will inevitably only pay so much in that neighborhood before moving on to a different area.

BRACKETING: Please know I’m not trying to give the appraiser a hard time or throw any appraiser under the bus (I love my fellow appraisers), but I did want to offer the above points because there is space for some conversation. While the appraiser was incorrect about Fannie Mae’s rule, I do appreciate the appraiser being aware of the concept of bracketing. Bracketing is basically when appraisers will use some superior sales and some inferior sales to help establish value for a property. This can be a good practice when choosing potential comps because it helps us see the higher and lower ends of a competitive market. Bracketing is not always possible (see points 2-5), but it can help support a value or adjustments. For instance, if valuing a fixer property, we would want to use at least one fixer comp so we know what the market was actually willing to pay for a fixer. Otherwise if we only use remodeled homes for comparison, we are left sort of guessing what the downward adjustment should be for condition. Is it $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $100,000, etc….? The best way to know what the adjustment should be is to find actual fixers in the market. How much of a discount for condition is there between remodeled homes and fixers? The same holds true for figuring out the value of a built-in pool. Rather than guessing at the value (say $10,000), if we look at competitive home sales with and without pools, we can begin to extract a price buyers have been willing to pay. In other words, if we bracket sales with and without pools, it helps us begin to see the market.

HOW TO THINK LIKE AN APPRAISER (class I’m teaching): Locals, if you are around on July 16th, I’d love to have you come by the Sacramento Association of Realtors for a class I’m teaching called “How to Think Like an Appraiser”. This will be three hours of relevant conversation (and we’re going to have some fun). This is perfect for new agents as well as veterans. My goal is to leave you with insights to apply to your listings and tips for working with appraisers. Register here.

Why do appraisers get a copy of the contract? Doesn’t this set the value stage? Someone asked me this recently, and I wanted to respond with a few thoughts. I’d love to hear your take in the comments too.

Things to Remember about the Appraiser Knowing the Contract Price:

Fannie Mae Requirement: If you didn’t know, the Fannie Mae appraisal form requires appraisers to analyze the purchase contract. Fannie Mae wants appraisers to list the contract price, date of contract, whether the seller is the owner (a safeguard against fraud), and if there are any concessions offered to the buyer. Moreover, if the contract cannot be analyzed, the appraiser has to explain why. See the text below straight from Fannie Mae.

Valuable Data: Purchase contracts can provide valuable information to the appraiser. Sometimes there are listed repairs, credits offered, personal property given, or other incentives that might be influencing the agreed upon price. Other times there are a series of counter offers that help tell the story how a contract price was negotiated.

MLS: Even if Fannie Mae did not ask appraisers to analyze the contract, appraisers would likely have MLS data during a sale, and then the complaint would be that appraisers are using the MLS pending price as a target value. Thus the issue is appraisers need to be objective about the value regardless of the information they have (and having more information is a good thing when valuing a property).

The Bad: Appraisers can use a contract price as a target, but it shouldn’t be the goal to meet a certain value since appraisers are supposed to be objective and unbiased. We all know properties get into contract too high and too low at times, so appraisals shouldn’t “hit the number” every single time.

The Good: There is nothing wrong with reconciling the appraised value to the contract price if the contract price represents a reasonable and supported value for the neighborhood. When doing this, an appraiser might say the following: “The contract price falls within the range of values indicated by comparable properties and represents a reasonable value for the subject property. Therefore the opinion of value in this report was reconciled to the contract price.” Or in layman’s terms, “Yep, the buyer and seller nailed it. Value is solid right where they agreed. How can I argue with that?”

Straight from Fannie Mae (p. 564 of the Seller’s Guide): All appropriate financing data and sales concessions for the subject property that will be or have been granted by anyone associated with the transaction must be disclosed to the appraiser. Typically, this information is provided in the sales contract. Therefore, the lender must provide, or ensure that the appraiser is provided with a copy of the complete ratified sales contract and all addenda for the property that is to be appraised. If the contract is amended, the lender must provide the updated contract to the appraiser to ensure that the appraiser has been given the opportunity to consider any changes and their affect on value. If the lender is aware of additional pertinent information that is not included in the sales contract, the lender must provide this information to the appraiser.

Questions: Do you think it makes a difference in the appraisal when the appraiser knows the contract price? Appraisers, what do you like or not like about analyzing the contract as a part of a purchase transaction?

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